


What Is Blue to a Blind Man?

by wannaliveindeansdimples



Series: Ana's AU's [7]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Adoption, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Kindergarten & Pre-school, Blind Castiel, Blind Character, Blindness, Boyfriends, Castiel/Dean Winchester First Kiss, Child Abandonment, Disabled Character, Falling In Love, First Kiss, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Happy Ending, Marriage Proposal, Physical Disability, Young Castiel, Young Dean Winchester, Young Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-19
Updated: 2015-03-19
Packaged: 2018-03-18 16:07:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3575529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wannaliveindeansdimples/pseuds/wannaliveindeansdimples
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based on the prompt,<br/>"I was born blind.<br/>Many people would just be my friend for a few years and leave. Except one boy.<br/>He stayed with me since kindergarten, despite my disabilities.<br/>Last year, I got surgery so I could regain my sight.<br/>The first thing that I saw when I woke up was the one boy, on his one knee, asking for my hand in marriage. AU" (from a love givemehope.com post)<br/>Also available in <a href="http://ficbook.net/readfic/3121885">Russian/ру́сский язы́к</a> and Vietnamese/Tiếng Việt on <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/4447862">AO3</a> and <a href="https://keepcalmandshipit.wordpress.com/2015/07/28/what-is-blue-to-a-blind-man/">Wordpress</a> - Thanks translators!</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Is Blue to a Blind Man?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Yamira](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yamira/gifts).



> Written on a road trip and unbeta'd, so please excuse all the ~~undoubtedly extensive~~ typos and errors.

My name is Castiel and I was born without the ability to see. My mother thought my blindness was a curse from God and abandoned me at the local Catholic church.

Her abandonment may seem cruel, but she was only the first in a long line of people who did so. So perhaps what she did was a blessing. It helped prepare me for the life that was to come.

Because I was a baby, they were able to find a home for me rather quickly, but taking care of a blind infant is much different from caring for a blind toddler. By the time I was two, I was back at the church.

The next family kept me until I was six.

To be fair to them, my blindness was not the only black mark against me by that point. I was not a very charming child. While I rarely misbehaved or became petulant, I was incredibly solemn and my above-average intelligence meant that I was often pedantic, correcting them endlessly.

I suppose it must have been tiresome.

One thing that happened when I was five, though, was I made my first real friend. I had made friends in preschool and at the church, but those friendships never seemed to last for very long. I could blame it on random circumstance, but the more likely answer is that I simply drove them away with the same characteristics that seemed to drive away any and all parental figures.

My kindergarten friend was different, though. Unlike most people, he could make me laugh. I’m not sure that anyone else ever tried before him.

I met him one day on the playground during recess. I’d been in kindergarten for a few weeks already, but he had just started at our school that day. Everyone else already knew about me, so I was surprised when he walked up to me and accused me of staring.

“What are you looking at?” he had asked in a voice as filled with bluster and bravado as he could manage at the tender age of five.

_Not expecting to be spoken to, I ignored him, assuming he was speaking to someone else near me. However, my lack of response made him even angrier. I felt a shove on my shoulder._

_“Hey! What are you, deaf? I asked you what you were looking at! You got a staring problem or something? You think I’m funny looking?”_

_“No, I’m not deaf. I’m blind, actually. I wasn’t looking at anything.”_

_“Oh,” he said, all anger gone from his voice. It had been replaced by something like awed sadness. “You can’t see nothin’ at all?”_

_“No,” I said._

_“But your eyes are so pretty!” he said and then I heard a slap. When he spoke again his voice was muffled, as though his hand were covering his mouth. “I mean, like, the color.” I heard a little intake of breath. “Oh. You prolly dunno what colors are, huh?”_

_“No, not really.”_

_“Well, look, uh... What’s yer name?”_

_“Castiel.”_

_“Look, Casteeyell, I’m Dean and me and you are gonna be friends. ‘Cause if you can’t see there’s probably lots of things you’re missing. You need me to watch out for you.”_

_“Okay,” I agreed readily. Even though we had just met, I could tell Dean wasn’t like most people. “Friends,” I said, holding out my hand to shake as I’d been taught._

Though my second set of adoptive parents were out of my life within another couple of months, Dean remained. Because of my history, the church made sure I always stayed in the same school district. So even though I went through another couple of families by the time I got to junior high, Dean and I were still in the same schools.

In sixth grade, I met a girl named Meg. She used words like “cute” and “hot” to describe me, the day she walked up to the lunch table I shared with Dean and announced that she was going to be my girlfriend. I understood the context of the words, even if I had no concept of what they meant.

_As soon as Meg left the table, Dean tried to discourage me from the relationship. “Cas, dude, I don’t trust her.”_

_“Well, to be honest, I don’t know if I do, either, but... Dean, it might be my only chance to have a romantic relationship. In case it has escaped your attention, no one else is exactly busting down my door asking for a kiss. What if this is the only opportunity that ever comes along?”_

_Dean said quietly, “What if... I kissed you?”_

_I groaned. “Dean, I don’t want a pity kiss.” I considered the fact that he’d been willing to do that even though he liked girls, so I added, “Thank you for the offer, though.”_

_Personally, I didn’t really care about gender. It wasn’t like I could see them, so what did it matter to me? Maybe other blind people felt differently, but for me it was a non-issue. I had never told Dean. I had heard how his father felt about relationships between people of the same sex and I didn’t want to risk being judged._

Dean was right, of course. Meg was bad news. I was one of the smartest people in our grade and it turned out she just wanted to steal my homework. She even taught herself to read braille visually in order to do it. Still, I did get my first kiss.

I was in high school before I got kissed again.

The church had given up trying to find me a permanent home by that point. They didn’t even bother with foster care. They let me stay in the rectory and I worked for my room and board. Most of the time, I was at Dean’s, anyway.

We were in his room one day, listening to a new album he wanted me to hear. He had me listen to new music just about every week. He worked on cars on the weekends—when I was busiest at the rectory—and was making decent money, so he could afford albums if he wanted. The ones I liked he sometimes loaned to me, only, he never seemed to want them back.

Sometimes, his younger brother Sam joined us, but on this particular day, he was at a friend’s house. Their father, John, was at work, so the two of us had the house to ourselves. The music was cranked up loud and I was laughing uncontrollably at a joke Dean had made.

_I laughed at his joke, wondering as I often did, why he seemed to be so much funnier than other people. He just said things differently. He made jokes I understood. He made the world make sense to me, really._

_“Man,” Dean said suddenly—and from much closer than I’d expected. “It really is a shame you can’t see your eyes.” I didn’t know why, but the idea that he thought the one thing I should be able to see was my own eyes touched me profoundly. “They’re so freakin’ pretty, especially when you laugh like that.” His voice was soft, almost reverent, and seemed to be getting closer._

_When he pressed warm, velvety lips to mine, I was unprepared. I jerked backward slightly in surprise and he was instantly scrambling back, apologizing and begging me not to be mad._

_“Please, Cas, you’re my best friend, I’m sorry, don’t be mad, I didn’t mean to—” His words all tumbled out in a rush._

_“Dean?” I asked softly once my brain had caught up to what had just happened._

_“Yeah?” he asked, hesitantly._

_“Do it again,” I whispered._

_“You—really?”_

_I nodded. I could feel him come close again. This time he touched my face and guided our mouths together. I reached out and put my hand on his shoulder. When his lips closed over mine this time, I was more than prepared. I kissed him back with every bit of skill I remembered from my long ago experiences with Meg._

_Kissing Dean was nothing like that. Kissing Dean was like flying. Kissing Dean was like being truly alive for the first time. I never wanted to stop, but eventually he pushed me away._

_“My dad’ll be back soon. He won’t, um... he doesn’t know that I like guys too. When I was little he used to get mad at me if I said boys were pretty. And, well, I’m sure you’ve heard him.”_

_He sounded ashamed, but I just smiled. “Before long you’ll be eighteen, Dean. And then it won’t matter what your dad thinks. I don’t mind keeping it a secret until then.”_

His father found out before then, but he surprised us both. While he wasn’t thrilled, he was accepting. He even made a joke: “At least Dean can’t knock you up, right?”

We counted it as a victory.

The year I turned twenty-one, I came into an inheritance. It turned out that my mother had left money with me when she abandoned me at the church. A significant amount of it. The nun who found me had placed it in a trust, to be paid out when I reached twenty-one. Two decades is a long time to earn interest and I was able to more or less do as I pleased after that.

When I learned there was a surgery that could restore my sight, I was anxious to sign up. Dean was more hesitant, though I couldn’t understand why. He seemed to think if I could see I wouldn’t need him anymore, but I assured him that was the dumbest thing I’d ever heard.

_“I want to be able to see these blue eyes you’re always talking about,” I teased. “Since they’re so pretty and everything.”_

_Dean snorted. “Yeah, all right. I guess that’s something you shouldn’t miss, huh?”_

_“You always said it was a shame I couldn’t,” I reminded him._

_“You’re right, Cas,” he conceded. “You’re gonna like blue a lot, I promise.”_

I was more anxious as I waited for the bandages to come off post-op than I had been during all the weeks leading up to the surgery. My heart was beating faster than at any time I could remember—except maybe when I told Dean I loved him for the first time. I was sweating and nauseated and generally wanted the whole thing to be over with.

_“All right, Castiel, I’m unwrapping the last one,” the doctor said. “The lights are dim, but it may be uncomfortable for you at first. It’s best if you open your eyes very slowly.” She continued pulling away bandages. “All right, we’re almost there. Now remember, it’s going to be a little overwhelming at first. You won’t know what you’re seeing.”_

_“Is Dean here?” I asked, my voice shaking with emotion._

_“I’m right here, Cas,” Dean answered. He sounded like he was closer to the floor than where the doctor was, so I assumed he was sitting down for some reason. He took my hand. “You’re gonna be fine, Cas. Finally gonna get to see those blue eyes, huh?”_

_“Yes,” I said, hardly more than a breath._

_The doctor removed the bandage. “Open your eyes, very slowly.”_

_For the first time in my twenty-some years of existence, when I opened my eyes there was something other than darkness on the other side. I knew the basic shapes of some things from touch, but seeing them was a completely different thing. At first, I felt a little like I was going crazy._

_Then I looked at my hand, which I knew Dean was holding. That gave me a context to understand what a hand was. Then an arm and then... Dean’s face. His beautiful perfect face. I didn’t know what color his eyes were, but they were lovely. Whether mine were as pretty as he said remained to be seen. I looked at each part of him, memorizing it._

_Then I noticed his other hand was holding something too. There was a shape I thought must be what I had learned as “round” inside what I believed was “square.”_

_“What’s that in your hand?” I asked._

_“It’s a ring, Cas.”_

_“A ring?” I asked, not comprehending, even as I noticed he was on one knee._

_“Yeah, an engagement ring.”_

_“An engagement ring?” I repeated, my brain taking in too much new information to put it all together._

_“Yeah. You know. Now that you can see, I wondered if maybe you’d be willing to see my green eyes with your pretty blue ones for the rest of our lives.”_

_Suddenly, everything went blurry and I nearly panicked, but the doctor explained that would happen whenever I cried._

_“Yes, Dean. Yes.”_

_He put the ring on my finger and picked up another object, which he handed me. “Here, you haven’t seen your pretty blue eyes yet, sweetheart. Why don’t you take a look? Just hold that up close to your face.”_

_So I lifted what I learned was a mirror and I saw a pair of large eyes blinking back at me. I learned what the color blue was and added it to my mental rainbow along with green and silver._

_I looked back at Dean. “You were right. I like blue.” I set the mirror aside and held out my empty hand for him to take. “But I like green much better.”_

**Author's Note:**

> Follow my [author Tumblr](http://jamiedeanwrites.tumblr.com//post/118453611081/the-story-of-jax-and-dylan) for boys kissing, pansexual facts, book news and general shenanigans.
> 
> So, what did you think of my first FPPOV fic? ♥


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